BRYDGES, SIR SAMUEL EGERTON (1762-1837), English genealogist and miscellaneous writer, was born on the 30th of November 1762. He studied at Queens' College, Cambridge, and was entered at the Middle Temple in 1782, being called to the bar in 1787. In 1789 he persuaded his elder brother that their family were the heirs to the barony of Chandos, being descended from a younger branch of the Brydges who first held the title. The case was tried and lost, but Brydges never gave up his claim, and used to sign himself Per legem terrae B.C. of S. (i.e. Baron Chandos of Sudeley). He re-edited Collins's Peerage, inserting a statement about his supposed right. In 1814 he was made a baronet, and in 1818 he left England. He died at Geneva on the 8th of September 1837. Sir Egerton was a most prolific author; he is said to have written 2000 sonnets in one year. His numerous works include Poems (1785); Centura Literaria (1805-1809); The British Bibliographer (4 vols., 1810-1814), with J. Haslewood; Restituta (4 vols., 1814-1816), containing accounts of old books; and Autobiography, Times, Opinions and Contemporaries of Sir S.E. Brydges (1834). In 1813 Brydges began to supply material to a private printing press established at Lee Priory, Kent, by a compositor and a pressman, who were to receive any profits which might arise from the sale of the works published. In this way Brydges published various Elizabethan texts, at considerable expense to himself, which increased the services he had already rendered to the study of Elizabethan literature by his bibliographical works.

For a full list of his works see W.T. Lowndes, Bibliographer's Manual (ed. H.G. Bohn, 1857-1864).